Gaming laptops have their place in consumer electronics. As a replacement for desktop gaming units, they are severely lacking in power. The only real advantage to spending the money on a laptop in order to play games is if you are planning to visit your friends often enough to make the excessive amount of money worth it.
$1,500 for a Laptop?
Although these mobile computing units do have an impressive array of hardware, you need to consider the price versus how often you will actually take it on the road. For half of the price of one of these fine units, you could build a more powerful desktop complete with 7.1 digital surround sound. Unless you are planning on using this gaming laptop regularly away from home, the investment may simply be too much to really justify the cost of an extravagant expense.
Options-a-Plenty for Performance
When was the last time you benefited from the effects of utilizing dual or triple PCIe video cards in SLi configuration on a laptop? How often do you hear someone creeping up behind as the sound of his or her boots crunching through the rocks permeates from a surround sound speaker system? It’s not very often, to be sure. If you run out of hard drive space, install a secondary hard drive if you can. This isn’t saying anything about a 17.1-inch LCD screen compared to a 22-inch widescreen desktop monitor. Of course these extravagances begin to increase the cost of the desktop PC, but it’ll still fall short of the price compared to a gaming laptop.
Is there a Doctor in the House?
Replacements and upgrades for gaming laptops are not only costly, but extremely difficult depending on the piece of hardware that needs improvement. For example, it would take a user less than three minutes to swap out a video card for an upgrade. There is no such luck with gaming laptops. The only real effective way you can upgrade these units is replacing memory or perhaps the hard drive. Anything else requires extensive surgery. You can’t simply unplug the screen and plug in a new one if it is damaged.
Slow Degradation of Performance
Gaming laptops are loaded with some impressive features, to be sure. At the time of the machine’s debut, these units could be state of the art game playing monsters. However, this time next year they won’t be able to adapt to the liquid fluidity of graphics they once processed due to extensive programming enhancements. At which point, a desktop user simply buys the next upgrade to the video card and installs it. The laptop gamer has to either suffer through the inadequacies or buy a new device.
The Mobility Factor
A gaming laptop does give the advantage of being able to easily transport your games to a friend’s house for cooperative entertainment. Although you can pack up a desktop and take it to your friend’s house, it’s not really practical to do so. A system that is heavily integrated into a location as a desktop system is with all of its connected equipment, it could be very difficult to disassemble the computer each time you want to take the games with you.
As long as there are hardcore gamers that require the power and versatility of a gaming desktop, these machines will never lose their spark. Mobility comes at the price of scalability and functionality. Many gamers would rather revel in the power behind the desktop while owning the laptop for travel. But as a replacement of desktops, these mobile gaming units just don’t have the capabilities to handle such a feat.
Author Bio: Gabriel Lexus is a creative writer for CPUInc, specializing in data storage. Gabriel enjoys writing and discussing technology. Gabriel often writes about computers and give advice to others who have questions about computer issues.
